Under the Pendulum Sun
Rate it:
Open Preview
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between May 7 - May 12, 2020
37%
Flag icon
The span of a book, that was the distance I was offering him in this truce. I would not cross that space.
37%
Flag icon
They were but stinging from the dust. Nothing else.
37%
Flag icon
“And Tamar took the cakes which she had made, and brought them into the chamber to Amnon her brother. And when she had brought them unto him to eat, he took hold of her, and said unto her, Come lie with me, my–”
'trie
2 sam 13:10
37%
Flag icon
“You always liked Hagar’s prayer.”
37%
Flag icon
she called to the God Who Sees and she named him as such.
37%
Flag icon
“And she called the name of the LORD that spake unto her, Thou God seest me: for she said, Have I also here looked after him that seeth me?”
37%
Flag icon
We discussed the passage in the understanding of divine providence and various ways God’s Sight anchored the wo...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
37%
Flag icon
The new gravity of the situation did not, however, entirely prevent more frivolous theology.
37%
Flag icon
“You can’t just point out Light rhymes with Sight and then call it your proof.”
'trie
and, yet, fairy logic
37%
Flag icon
“And Genesis does begin with the creation of Light itself. The act of seeing is impossible without it.” “No, by that logic God is blind in the dark.” “But the dark before the world is no ordinary dark. And I am quoting you on God’s blindness in the future.” “You can’t cite me to refute me. We’ve decidedly already established that.”
37%
Flag icon
But the sun was not our own. It hung at the end of a thread, a burnished brazen disk. It seemed so close, it took up half the sky. The pendulum sun was completely still above us.
37%
Flag icon
With the brilliance of the sun, the moon was only visible in the shadow of clouds. It seemed awkward and small with its unseeing eyes and mouth full of crooked teeth. It swam in desperate circles, searching for darkness.
37%
Flag icon
counted numerous seconds outside of time. It was strange to imagine these seconds unrecorded and apart.
37%
Flag icon
I remembered the stories of the Egyptian days that belonged to no year, the time when the false gods broke their own laws ...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
37%
Flag icon
Soon, they would reset the clock of...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
37%
Flag icon
They would drag the pendulum across the sky to the furthest edge of the Faelands a...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
37%
Flag icon
The pendulum sun remained. Arcadia was holding its b...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
37%
Flag icon
brushing against my ear in mimicry of a secret.
37%
Flag icon
It tasted of the moors.
37%
Flag icon
He was waiting, a dark, beautiful silhouette against the pendulum sun. He reached his hand to mine and our fingers tangled. And then suddenly, it was pitch black. The clock had started.
37%
Flag icon
It is like poison. You drink it slowly, over time, and hopefully you will become used to it. Sip it. Every day, until your body is so used to dying a little at a time that it no longer feels the pain as pain, no longer recognises it because it is so good at hiding, at pretending. We are all dying slowly, a little more pain would make little difference. So every day, a tiny sip of death, embraced and savoured like life, like reality, like truth, like everything that is good and worthy and wonderful. It is like drinking shards of broken glass – fragments of a dream – so beautiful, what was once ...more
38%
Flag icon
“I have forgotten and this is no longer pain, because I feel it so much, because it is like second nature to me, as natural as breathing, and I no longer remember what it is like when it was whole, when I was not feeling this, when it doesn't run through me.”
38%
Flag icon
you will not bleed, not really, because you will be so used to bleeding inside, you will not feel it.
38%
Flag icon
And then, then, you will be stronger.
38%
Flag icon
water. I wanted to breathe slower, to drift like dust.
38%
Flag icon
Its unchanging roundness gave the illusion of time staying still, of a world holding its breath.
38%
Flag icon
It was easy to believe that soon my days would be nothing but this watery twilight.
38%
Flag icon
The door to empty air was open.
38%
Flag icon
We were on the roof. I did not remember stairs.
38%
Flag icon
It swam close.
38%
Flag icon
The woman in black clambered across the shingles. Her veil thrashed like a caged beast and she streamed long ribbons from her arms like a Morris dancer.
38%
Flag icon
Though her lip was split, I was certain I recognised her from one of the portraits in the long gallery.
38%
Flag icon
I was in a very small, narrow room. It had within it nothing more than an unmade bed and a travel trunk with leather handles. It was very new and bore a pair of brass initials.
39%
Flag icon
The woman in black stood beside a small, lit fireplace. I recognised it as one that was used for baking the Eucharist wafers. The rosy light illuminated the small chapel, dancing red upon the pews and the high altar. I recognised the scattered candlesticks and dishes. We were in the other chapel. The one in the white tower in the garden.
'trie
how is it used to bake the eucharist wafers if it's in the chapel tower?
39%
Flag icon
gilded altarpiece with faceless halos loomed over us,
39%
Flag icon
“It’s not real. He can’t see you, so it’s not real.”
39%
Flag icon
“Does it matter?” she whispered, voice hoarse with disuse. “He can’t see any of us.” “Of course it does.” “It’s not real, don’t you understand? None of this is real.”
39%
Flag icon
stand here, I think it a place. A real place, but it is nothing more than a painted set of a puppet box. Patchwork curtains and all. Except that we are the puppets.”
39%
Flag icon
“And what the word did make it I do believe and take it.”
39%
Flag icon
“He was the word that spoke it. I believe. He took the bread and broke it. I believe that too.”
39%
Flag icon
I will not be stolen away again. The gloved hand will strike; it holds the power. That within will speak truth and I fear, I should not fear.”
39%
Flag icon
“The fire looks after me. The fire loves me. But even that’s not real. Nothing really is around here.”
'trie
does the salamander love you?
39%
Flag icon
They built it all in a day and a night. You don’t know where you are. You don’t see because you’re blind. I don’t see because I don’t have eyes.”
39%
Flag icon
“But then you weren’t wrong.” She pressed one of the letters against her lips in a reverent kiss. “The worst lie.” Another kiss. “The best lie.” Another. “The only lie… it is always the truth.”
39%
Flag icon
can’t kill me quickly, so I just have to do it slow. Slow, slow. So slow,”
39%
Flag icon
Bringer of dreams.
39%
Flag icon
“He went fast. Leapt through the door from dreams.”
39%
Flag icon
“Lost but found. Stolen but safe.”
39%
Flag icon
“The original,” she whispered. “I am the original.”
'trie
are you the human ariel?
39%
Flag icon
She also said that she was the original, a word that meant too many things and too few.
1 9 13